Genius Tricks Actors Use To Look Convincing On Screen

Aubrey Plaza is still largely associated with comedy, but she’s been proving her formidable dramatic acting chops more and more as time goes on. A recent example of the latter is her performance in Season 2 of HBO’s anthology series «The White Lotus,» which has earned her much acclaim and her first Emmy nomination. On the show she plays Harper Spiller, a woman who initially seems out of place at a resort full of entitled, misbehaving rich people but soon realizes she fits in better with them than she was willing to admit.

As the season goes on, Harper’s love of partaking in alcohol becomes more pronounced — and Plaza eventually needs to play Harper as intoxicated more often than not. She does so exceptionally well, which is difficult to pull off in a way that is realistic and doesn’t descend into over-the-top slapstick territory. Of course, an actor simply becoming drunk themselves in order to play a drunk person isn’t always the best idea either, and rarely works as intended. So Plaza not only pulled from her own experiences in how to play drunk, but she would literally spin around in circles and make herself dizzy before filming scenes where Harper is intoxicated — spinning less or more depending on how drunk Harper is supposed to be.